Been thinking a shit ton about what lockdown/isolation/whatever you want to call it has done for me personally, and especially what has gone down over this summer. The distancing began in March. It was sad, weird, and hard. Not to mention hug-less. For someone who requires physical touch for my love tank to fill up, there were days i had to wrap my own arms around my shoulders just to feel real instead of numb. Sending myself love from What lives inside me. Though emotions like sadness and helplessness were prominent in those earlier months, as time has gone on, and as social movements rose and arguments followed suit all across the world and therefore the internet, and though my mourning heart has never not welcomed the softness it is easily drawn to, i have found myself grieving in other ways. I saw a quote today that summed up my feelings quite succinctly: “Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot. All that unspent love gathers up in the corner of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.” - Jamie Anderson.
That hollow part of the chest. I used to refer to this feeling as “the hum.” It is both a feeling of sadness yet restlessness. The restlessness comes from helplessness, for not knowing where to place all that I feel and create something constructive from that. Nowhere for the love to go. Within the last two months, something snapped in me. And I think that the hum began to scream. Starting off with a grieving moan, then yelling, then escalating to a window shattering scream. Like so many, I have always been in the fight against anxiety and depression, whilst simultaneously choosing the side of victory. This does not mean the war(s) is over, it just means that I know in the end, I will always come out alive. I have chosen it. Yet, this journey from hum to scream hasn’t been without the ugly mess of spending too much time in my head, harmful isolation, constantly refusing the desire to never leave the safety of my bed, tears in the corner of my eyes, lumps in my throat, debilitating anxiety, sitting in depressive bouts, violent frustration, and the overwhelming desire to run away from everything to some proverbial place of safety.
This notion of emotional safety, of it even being an attainable thing, has been close to my heart for years. It has also been shattered and has resulted in a loss of trust, and a gruesome internal journey of what any of it even means, or if it even matters. As a day dreaming child (and who am I kidding, grown adult), my mind would often become my safe place. I could return to it and soak up, reinstall, remember all the things I love, and do my best to execute the sum of those things into my reality. Obviously, growing up with intention to actually grow, this has shown to not always be attainable as it caused me to get stuck living in a wonderland version of what I needed to be present for, specifically, to Love true. I don’t feel shame for how I coped- she did what she needed to do, even as I do now, as we all do. And so, as a 26 year old with little to her name and a shit load of love in her heart, my grievances and screaming have thrown me forward into causes that have always lingered inside of me, but often at a place of complacency, due to people pleasing, fear, self betrayal, and again, fear. The amount of sheer fearlessness that has resulted from this “snap” in me, has caused many chapters of my life to continue to make sense for me. I dive into pools of attainable “safety”- pools of mental wholeness, psychology, self awareness, and art and poetry that remind of divine meaning and hope. I realize again (and again and again) that adults are often children dressed as grown ups and holy shit! I am a grown up! Grace floods in. Flooding every floor of intolerance, annoyance, shame, disappointment, and woe. The world was built on hopeful yet often blind attempts. Who am I to judge? And who am I not to change things? The safety I once knew and revisited ever so often may not exist so prevalently now, but the complacency is jolted alive again, even if it leaves me feeling nauseous. And I seek out to trust again, even if it leaves me feeling like I am falling.
I say the words “Stay Awake” a lot both to myself and whomever listens my way. I mean this statement both literally and figuratively. While Covid19 has been a real mindfuck specifically for those of us struggling with mental/emotional health, I do believe that there is a call to wake up and stay up. I am so tired of hearing that valuable human beings choose to end themselves. I am so tired of seeing people I love second-guess their worth and feel stuck in a vortex of muddling creativity and ingeniousness because their hum was never given guidance. I am tired for my family, my aunts, my uncles, my cousins, my friends, the strangers I hear about on the news. I am tired for myself. I am tired of the stigmas that keep people quiet, that keep their screams hushed at hum level, so it can only be felt but not seen or heard, until the movement stops altogether. I’m tired of excuses made by people who want to pretend like it doesn’t relate to them. Grief is universally experienced. Why do we act like we are different from each other in this way? Why do we clam up, turn away, act as though people dying is not tied to us? This isn’t to toss the weight of the world on our backs or say it is our fault, but rather our responsibility. To Stay Awake. Stay aware, soft, listening, humble, learning, hopeful, alive. Do you mourn with the mourning? Or is it not your problem? While I do believe all of our lanes are important, the mast as important as the rudder, and we don’t need to drop all that we feel called towards in order for our hearts to remain open to the fact that: Love, we are all connected. Healing the sprained ankle allows the whole body its deserved freedom of movement. Are you waking up?
Becoming aware of Who I Am and what I am made up of has kept me literally alive. Accepting and loving all of this has caused me to Stay Awake. This is why the well meaning wish to “stay safe” during a world wide time of crisis feels slightly off-putting to me, and the words flowing naturally from there (for me) are for you to Stay Awake. This does not always mean feeling absolute safety. There is risk involved in reality. There is personal responsibility, heartache, trust broken, and deconstruction. There is also abundance. Abundance of freedom, of no turning back, of grace, of resilience, of reconstruction and unconditional love. I don’t think it is too utopian of me to believe that I can change things. I just think it’s my responsibility, and my joy, to Stay Awake.
